


This Too Shall Pass

by Cinnamongirl



Series: Uranium Fever [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 01:17:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15741180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinnamongirl/pseuds/Cinnamongirl
Summary: Shaun’s earliest memories were of being told that he was important.





	This Too Shall Pass

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the [song by Danny Schmidt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg5kB4UcAuA).
> 
> The Sole Survivor here is Stephanie from Uranium Fever, but the stories can be read independently or in any order.

Shaun’s earliest memories were of being told that he was important. It was what the scientists always said when he asked why he didn’t have parents or why he had to be poked with needles all the time when none of the other kids did. Shaun was important to the Institute and he had a very important role to play, so he must be good and not complain about minor inconveniences.

It was a shock to find out that he was important not because he never got in trouble or because he always had the best grades in his classes, or even because he’d built a working radio all by himself, but because of his _body_. It wasn't even anything that he was doing on purpose. He learned everything he could about genetics to try to understand the science behind why his DNA was so important for the Institute’s latest project, but it didn’t stop him from feeling sad when he thought about it. 

Shaun knew that his parents were dead, but he sometimes imagined that his mother was hugging him and saying things like “I love you,” and “You’ll be okay” when he was feeling sad or lonely. He never told anybody about this because he knew that they would laugh at him. Shaun had no idea what either of his parents had looked like so his mental image of his mother was always a hazy, faceless older woman wearing an Institute jumpsuit, which was later replaced by a hazy image of a woman wearing a pre-war dress that he’d seen in a book.

He continued to work hard in school, to prove that he was more than his DNA. It wasn’t enough to do well academically; he had to be friendly and helpful and always get along with everyone. As he got older, his natural talent for leadership emerged and he was soon a popular and brilliant teenage boy with a knack for resolving conflicts peacefully.

He hoped that his mother would have been proud of him.

 

Shaun was appointed the director of the Institute at a remarkably young age by an almost-unanimous vote, and it represented an important victory for him. His body had nothing to do with this; he was finally important because of his mind. He suddenly had more responsibility than ever before, but he also had access to all of the Institute records, including those about his parents.

He accessed the files on a Thursday afternoon, when a meeting had been canceled and his mind was starting to wander. Shaun wasn’t expecting to find anything in particular, except for maybe a sense of closure. It had never occurred to him that his mother would still be alive.

Shaun choked on his coffee when read the report about her. After he finished coughing, he blinked several times and leaned in closer to the terminal screen to make sure that he was reading it correctly. There had been no mistake: his mother was alive and in cryostasis. He could, theoretically, unfreeze her and meet her. He remembered being a child and dreaming about a mother who he thought was gone forever and it felt like he was choking again.

Of course, he would never really be able to bring her out of cryo. It would be a waste of Institute resources and he couldn’t think of any potential benefit for anyone besides himself. 

His father was dead. He’d been killed by Conrad Kellogg, a man who ostensibly worked for Shaun now. He was tempted to kill Kellogg himself in retaliation, or at least exile him to the surface, but it would also be a selfish waste of resources.

To be honest, it was far from the first time that he’d been upset about something that the Institute had done, but he wouldn’t have become the director if he didn’t think that the Institute was still the best hope for humanity.

Shaun tried to put his parents out of his mind and focus on identifying and planning for the future needs of the Institute in order to ensure that it would be sustainable long after he was gone. He also dedicated himself to promoting cohesion between the different departments. His position as director meant that he had to be impartial, so his friends became colleagues. The Institute grew larger and more powerful, and he slept less and worked more.

 

It was almost ironic that Shaun’s body, the thing that made him so important in the first place, was what started destroying him. He initially wrote off his symptoms as stress, or the fact that he wasn’t young anymore, until he couldn’t ignore them and found out that despite all of their scientific advancements, the Institute had never managed to find a cure for cancer.

Shaun followed all of his doctor’s instructions perfectly. He started obsessively researching the specific type of cancer that he had and he even started sleeping more, but it wasn’t enough. 

He didn’t _regret_ the fact that he’d never had children of his own, but he became more aware of it as he realized that there was a very real chance that he wouldn’t live much longer. His mother was his only living relative and he would die without ever getting to meet her. 

It was still a foolish idea, and the reasons why he hadn’t pursued it a long time ago were still true. It would be a waste of Institute resources. He had no idea what kind of person his mother was, especially after long-term cryostasis. She might be dangerous and unstable, a person who should never be allowed to set foot in the Institute. She might be angry with him for waking her and forcing her into a world that she didn’t understand. She might not want to have anything to do with him.

_Fuck it_ , he thought. _I may not even live long enough to see my reputation suffer from this._

The plan that he finally came up with was admittedly over-complicated, but it tied up both loose ends at minimal risk to the Institute. Kellogg was sent on a mission with a child synth prototype. Institute operatives were dispatched to unfreeze his mother and then leave the Vault before she woke up, and the rest was up to her. She might die, alone and unprepared in the harsh and unforgiving environment of the surface. She might survive but not care about Shaun anymore, content to live out the rest of her life on the surface without ever trying to find out what had happened to him. The Institute would continue on with its mission and Shaun would eventually die, knowing that his mother was out there somewhere. Or, hypothetically, she might try to find him.

While he was recovering from treatments that made him too weak to think clearly, let alone get any work done, he read the reports about his mother that came in from the informants scattered around the Commonwealth. Everything that Shaun read about her made him admire her more. She’d made her way to Diamond City and picked up on the trail that Kellogg had left for her. She constantly helped people everywhere she went, and she seemed to leave each place better than she’d found it. The informants all said that she was smart and talented. She was an excellent shot with a rifle and she could build almost anything out of scavenged pre-war parts. She was charismatic too, and she could talk almost anyone into anything. Doc Weathers and Trashcan Carla sent back angry reports about how she’d somehow managed to convince them to pay her more than they could afford in exchange for useless junk. 

Shaun would have expected such a remarkable person to quickly become a legend on the surface, but she was too cautious for that. She made an effort to be unassuming, never leaving an impression unless she wanted to. Even the people who had been taught to recognize her and look for her sometimes had trouble realizing who they were interacting with. It wasn’t unusual for her to disappear entirely, only to be spotted weeks later by the Institute’s crows on the other side of the Commonwealth with no record of what she had been doing in the meantime.

His mother was also _funny_ , which always surprised him. Informants reported that she had a dry, sarcastic sense of humor that always caught them off-guard. People frequently didn’t even realize that she’d been making fun of them until she was long gone.

It was obvious that she was wasted on the dying cesspit that was the surface. Shaun would have been pushing to recruit her even if he wasn’t related to her. He was almost tempted to send out Coursers to bring her to the Institute and offer her a job outright, but he’d committed to his plan of letting her come to him if and when she wanted to.

Besides, it was obvious that she was planning _something_. She was stockpiling metal and scavenging parts from old military bases and it was even harder to keep track of her movements than it had ever been. The rumors that she’d killed a Courser were especially concerning, but Shaun secretly hoped that it was part of an elaborate plan to break into the Institute. He’d had no idea how close she was until the alert was sent out that she’d managed to relay inside.

His plan went into place quickly. S9-23 was stationed behind a glass, at the end of a path that his mother was led down. Shaun spoke to her over the loudspeaker as he watched her on the camera. Instead of the hazy image he used to have of a smiling woman in a pre-war dress, the person on the camera was wearing mismatched pieces of armor strapped on over dirty leathers, with a rifle slung over her shoulder. He reminded himself that she’d done what she had to do in order to survive on the surface. She was moving slowly down the corridor, constantly glancing around to see if she was being followed. She turned a corner and came face-to-face with one of the cameras and Shaun gasped out loud when he saw that she looked almost perfectly like a younger, female version of him.

His heart was beating fast with anxiety by the time she entered the room with S9-23. Shaun realized that this was what he’d been waiting his whole life to see. How would she have treated him if he’d known her when he was a child?

She started talking to S9-23 but something was wrong. It was afraid of her. She crouched down so that she was eye level with it and tried speaking in a soothing voice. “Hey Shaun, I’m sorry I scared you. I know you don’t remember me but I love you and I’m here to help you.” Even as the synth panicked at the sight of her, Shaun felt his eyes start to prickle with tears. No matter how she reacted to meeting him as an old man, she would have loved him as a child. The lonely little boy that he’d once been felt vindicated.

He knew that he had to shut down the synth before it made the situation any worse. Taking a deep breath, Shaun entered the room and spoke the recall code. His mother turned to look at him, confused. Her eyes met his and he could see the exact moment that she realized.

“Shaun, is that you?”


End file.
